Thursday, May 1, 2014

State-Sponsored Supplications: Does the United States Really Need a National Day of Prayer?

Editor’s
Note: Today is the congressionally mandated National Day of Prayer.
“The Wall of Separation” is pleased to offer this guest post by James C.
Nelson, a retired justice of the Montana Supreme Court. Nelson was
appointed to the court by Gov. Marc Racicot in 1993 and was reelected to the position three times, serving until his retirement in 2013.

Congress
has proclaimed that the first Thursday in May – May 1, this year – be
set aside as a National Day of Prayer. There will be prayer breakfasts
and similar events conspicuously attended by elected officials,
politicians and sectarian persona.

But, should Congress and state officials be promoting prayer at all? According to the Constitution, no!

The
First Amendment guarantees two things: (1) that Congress will not
prohibit the free exercise of religion; and (2) that Congress will make no law
respecting an establishment of religion. These two clauses embody the
wall separating church and state – a wall that is supposed to keep
government out of religion, period.

Why, then, did
Congress create in 1952, and then codify in 1988, a “national” day of
prayer? If your answer is, “True to the intentions of the
Constitution’s framers, America is Christian Nation,” you’d be wrong.
Indeed, creating any kind of a religious nation, Christian or
otherwise, is exactly what the framers were trying to avoid when they
drafted the First Amendment. And for good reason.

At
the time the First Amendment was adopted there actually were official
state churches held over from colonial times. People were prosecuted and
imprisoned for their religious practices and public statements at odds
with those of the official or prevailing local religious views. Jews and
Muslims were demonized and persecuted; Christians often violently
disagreed over Biblical interpretation, religious doctrine and practice.
Each sect had its own lock on the truth.

In that
historical context, and based on the views of men like Roger Williams,
Thomas Jefferson, John Leland, George Washington, and James Madison, the
First Amendment’s religion clauses were drafted to guarantee freedom of
belief and tolerance for all religions - -and to keep government out of
that mix.

Importantly, there is not one mention of
God, Jesus, Christ, Christianity or prayer in the religion clauses.
There are only two references to “religion” in the Constitution – one in
the First Amendment and another in Article VI banning any religious
test for public office.

Indeed, the “Christian
Nation” concept first came into existence during the Civil War – largely
conceived and perpetuated by Northern ministers who, when the war was
going badly, announced that the Union Army’s defeats were God’s
punishment for ignoring God in the Constitution. But, when the tide of
war shifted, these same ministers then proclaimed that God was rewarding
the spiritually upright side of the conflict. Thus, America being
founded as a “Christian Nation” is fiction. Worse than that, it is
exactly contrary to what the framers were trying to negate in the First
Amendment.

So, besides violating the principle of
separation of church and state, what’s wrong with a national (or state)
day of prayer? First, Americans don’t need a congressional proclamation
to tell them to pray; they already have a personal, constitutional
right to pray – or not to pray – as they (not the government) see fit.

Second, government is not permitted to be in the business of telling people whether to pray, when to pray or who to pray to.

Third,
the National Day of Prayer has become a vehicle for spreading religious
misinformation and fundamentalist Christian doctrine under the aegis of
the government – again precisely what the framers were seeking to
prohibit.

Feel free to pray or not pray today – not
in response to a congressional proclamation but because you have a
constitutional right to do either. But, if you choose to pray, you may
want to ask that our elected officials begin to honor the letter and
spirit of the First Amendment and respect the separation of church and
state.